


last night I had the strangest dream

by LibraryCryptid



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, F/F, Mutual Pining, Sharing a Bed, The Xhorhaus, alternate title: the fic I worked on instead of my NaNo project, the disaster lesbians strike again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:40:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27439711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LibraryCryptid/pseuds/LibraryCryptid
Summary: Beau is silent for a long while, long enough that Yasha starts to grope for the door again, the tightness in her chest growing, and then-“You don’t have to sleep on the floor.”Yasha freezes, one hand on the doorknob. “What?”-In which Beau and Yasha continue to float around each other, and Jester is the best wingman you could hope for
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett/Yasha
Comments: 24
Kudos: 245





	last night I had the strangest dream

**Author's Note:**

> I offer this fic to the god of dnd disaster lesbians. 
> 
> -
> 
> I have my theories about how the Mollymauk/Lucian arc is going to play out but all in all I have no idea how it'll actually happen so imagine this fic taking place in some little vacuum of time. Y'know the TAZ Lunar Interludes? This is basically that.

The fight could’ve gone better, could’ve gone worse. At least, that’s what Beau’s telling herself as she lies in the mud, ribs screaming with every moment and the taste of her own blood in her mouth. They’d been ambushed by a group of bandits, and while they’re far past the days were scraps with roadside bandits meant near-death experiences, they’d been outnumbered two to one, and Beau has distinct memories of both an elbow to the face and a boot to the ribs. 

Caduceus comes rushing over, hands already glowing a warm green, but Beau shoves him away, saying “no, Fjord, he’s worse,” which may be a lie considering that she can feel something in her chest scrape together with every breath, and when she rolls over onto her side she’s spitting blood and saliva and it’s getting harder to see out of her left eye. But Fjord had taken a knife to the shoulder and Beau’s not really  _ bleeding,  _ at least not  _ externally _ . 

She’s not  _ hurt _ -hurt, but it’s still easier to lie in the mud and wait for Jester to come and heal her. Closing her eyes, she flops onto her back, and tries to focus on breathing in a way that doesn’t send needle-pinpricks of pain arching up through her body. She doesn’t bother opening her eyes when she hears the squish of boots in mud, instead just dramatically flings her arm out in the direction of the sound (ow).

“Took you long enough,” she slurs, her tongue swollen and heavy, and she’s  _ pretty sure  _ she’s just figured out why her mouth is full of blood. She tries to say it like a joke, but she’s reasonably confident that she looks fucking terrible. 

“Sorry, sorry!”

The worried voice that comes is not Jester’s, and Beau’s eyes (or eye, the other one staying stubbornly shut) fly open. Yasha is leaning over her, blood-splattered and unfairly good looking for just coming out of a fight. 

“Thought you were Jester,” Beau says, trying for an apologetic smile that just turns into a grimace, because apparently moving her face hurts, too. She tries for a dismissive wave (ow), and says “I’m all good.”

The mangled way the words come out of her mouth don’t seem to reassure Yasha, who kneels down in the mud next to her, wiping her bloody hands off on an equally bloody tunic. “Your eye,” she says, reaching out to gently poke at the swollen part of Beau’s face (fucking  _ ow _ ), discovering what Beau is pretty sure is a fracture. She wishes she could say that she was cool in this moment, which Yasha’s hands on her face, but instead she just lets out a wheezy gasp of pain that she will deny  _ ever  _ making. 

This seems to concern Yasha more, and Beau doesn’t have any time to react before she can feel Yasha’s hand begin to warm, glowing with the soft light of her magic. She can’t help but let out a relieved sigh as the throbbing behind her eye decreases, and her tongue no longer feels swollen to twice its size. For a second, she leans into Yasha’s gentle touch, the soft brush of a thumb against her cheekbone, and then Yasha pulls her hand away.

Beau rolls over and spits more blood (super attractively, she’s sure), then slowly, achingly, pushes herself upwards. Yasha reaches out and grasps her elbow, helping to haul her to her feet. But as soon as she puts any weight on her right leg, her knee buckles underneath her and she ends up crashing into Yasha’s side, because apparently her knee is injured, too. 

“Oh! Are you okay?” Yasha asks, concerned, helping to prop Beau up, her forehead creased in concern. The dark blue of her paint has smeared along her cheekbone, and there’s a splatter of blood along her chin, and Beau has no idea why those two things combine to make her suddenly weaker in the knees than she already was, or why her mouth is suddenly dry. 

“Yeah, yeah,” she says, as smoothly as she can while clinging to Yasha’s arm so her legs don’t give out. “I’m good.”

Yasha hesitates, and looks like she wants to say something else, but whatever strange little moment is happening is ruined as someone goes “Oh my gosh, Beau! You look  _ so bad.” _

“Thanks, Jes,” Beau says drily, Jester’s hands twisting into a healing spell, dark green light building between her palms. And then she’s healed, and Yasha’s being called off by Fjord to come look at some weapons, and whatever moment might have happened is gone.

-

The walk to the Xhorhaus feels longer than usual. Their group is already a little odd for Rosohna, and the addition of them all being coated in blood gathers even more attention during the short walk. The first glimpse of the tree is a welcome sight, glowing warmly against the darkness of the city sky, and Yasha can feel a little of the tension in her shoulders escape at the sound of the little bells hanging above the door. 

As soon as the door is closed, everyone splits off from the group, shucking weapons and coats, bags and boots in untidy piles to be dealt with later. But, before Beau can leave, Yasha reaches out, brushes a hand against her elbow.

Beau turns, holding herself in the sore, stiff way that comes after being healed; like your body hasn’t quite realized that it’s no longer hurt. She looks tired, Yasha thinks, dark bags under her eyes, a bit of bruising still mottling her cheekbone from where the bone was fractured. 

“Are you okay?” Yasha asks, and immediately regrets it because it’s such a  _ stupid  _ think to ask, but Beau gives a tiny smile, one corner of her mouth quirking up. 

“Yeah, I’m good,” Beau answers quietly, leaning against her staff. “I think I’m gonna wash this blood off and then go to bed.” 

“Okay, I just...wanted to check. To make sure you were...okay.” 

Beau tilts her head, looking a little confused, even though she’s still smiling. “Yep, I’m good. Just tired.”

All Yasha can do is nod, and after a moment, Beau turns and begins slowly making her way up the stairs. 

Tiredness drags on Yasha, too, muscles starting to ache from the fight, and so after a quick meal with Caduceus, Jester, and Veth, Yasha heads to her own bedroom. She expects sleep to find her easily, but instead she finds herself lying on her bed, staring at the mural painted across her walls, unable to sleep. 

It’s strange, how she no longer finds silence comforting. She’s so used to the sounds of other people just  _ existing  _ around her, that the quietness of her room feels almost suffocating. Her whole life, she’s been surrounded by others when she sleeps; in tents with her tribe, crammed in Caleb’s dome, in the small rooms of shitty inns, sharing beds with others in the Mighty Nein. She loves this room, she does, but now she can imagine an echo. 

She’s sure, if she asked, Caduceus would let her sleep on his floor again, and she’s pretty sure Fjord would do the same. But it’s not their doors she finds herself hesitating outside, an internal battle going on somewhere behind her ribcage. She tells herself it’s because she doesn’t want to wake them (her) up. She knows, somewhere deep down inside, in that tiny, vulnerable part of her that she’s not sure if she could handle the rejection.

Before she can think too much about it, she pushes the door open as quietly as she can. She’ll wake Jester, she thinks, ask if she can borrow a blanket and sleep on the floor because Jester will say yes without hesitation, and asking Jester is  _ easier.  _ She tries not to think about why.

Yasha slips into the room, and tells herself it’s because Beau was hurt, and Beau needs to sleep. 

The carpet is plush beneath her bare feet, and even if Yasha didn’t have dark vision she would know which bed is Jester’s by the giant pile of pillows alone. She creeps forward, Jester letting out little wheezy breaths in sleep, and Yasha is so focused on her task that she doesn’t realize how quiet the room is otherwise.

“Yasha?” 

Beau’s voice is soft, barely there, and it’s only by a barbarian’s will that Yasha doesn’t jump three feet in the air. Beau’s propping herself up on one elbow, hair loose around her jaw, blanket sliding away to reveal one shoulder, bared to the room. The two of them blink at each other for a moment, equally startled to find the other awake, before both talking at once. 

“Sorry I didn’t mean-”

“Are you okay, is there something wrong?”

Again, they blink at each other, and Yasha breaks eye contact first, pulling her shawl tighter around herself. “I’m sorry,” she repeats, already backing towards the doorway. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

“You didn’t. I’ve been awake.” Beau sits fully up, blankets puddling around her hips. “It’s...it can be hard to sleep after a fight, sometimes. Are you okay?”

Yasha pauses, one hand reaching out behind her for the edge of the door. “I’m fine, it’s just my room was quiet, and it’s-”

“Lonely,” Beau finishes, and some of the tension in Yasha’s chest relaxes, just a little bit, and she stops groping for the door. 

“I was going to ask if I could sleep on your floor,” Yasha explains, the unuttered  _ so it wouldn’t feel so lonely  _ still coating the tip of her tongue. 

Beau is silent for a long while, long enough that Yasha starts to grope for the door again, the tightness in her chest growing, and then-

“You don’t have to sleep on the floor.”

Yasha freezes, one hand on the doorknob. “What?”

Beau reaches for the edge of her blankets, tossing them back in a clear invitation. “Wanna shnuggle?” she asks, and although the words are Jester’s it’s delivered in a soft, vulnerable whisper that causes a warm glow, deep in the pit of Yasha’s stomach. She considers several things at once; a confession under a tree in the wilds of Xhorhas (“ _ I’ve seen you” _ ), a cold hand slipping into hers as they stand over the empty grave of a friend, a piece of parchment passed across a dented wooden table, and the reaction to it (“ _ no one’s ever written me a poem before”).  _ Before she can overthink, she’s across the room and crawling under the blanket Beau holds up, carefully settling herself against the mattress. 

The sheets are soft and smell vaguely floral, and despite the care Yasha took in getting under the sheets, her shoulder knocks against Beau’s. There are a few moments of shifting from both of them as they attempt to find a comfortable position, and by the end of it Yasha’s flat on her back, on arm resting on her stomach, and Beau’s on her side facing Yasha, eyes wide and dark. 

This shouldn’t be a big deal, Yasha’s shared beds with Beau before; nights in the dome are spent with them all piled on top of each other in the small space, and there have been enough shitty beds rented above shittier bars in their travels. But this feels different, and the feeling only grows as the silence does, broken only by Jester sighing in her sleep on the other side of the room. 

Then-

“You’re not going to leave us again, are you?”

Yasha turns her head. Beau isn’t meeting her eyes, is tracing her fingers along some invisible line across the sheets, blanket pulled back up over her shoulder. 

“Why would I leave?” Yasha asks, cautiously.

“It’s just…” Beau sighs, curling up tighter around herself. “It’s been a while, y’know? Since you did anything for the Stormlord. And I remember Molly said that you used to leave all the time, and you’d just show up again, but I don’t…” she trails off, one hand fisting in the blanket. 

Yasha reaches up, tugs gently on one of her braids, as she mulls over the answer. “I don’t think he’s going to call me like that anymore,” she admits. “Our relationship feels... _ different,  _ now. Sometimes I wonder if he was even calling me in the first place, or if it was all in my head, and I was making up stories in order to feel like I was doing something?”

“Do you feel it now? Like you’re doing something?”

“I do.” Yasha watches the steady rise and fall of Beau’s shoulder with each breath. “But I also think, back then, I was running away. Always. From Zuala, from Obann, from Molly, and now…”

“You’re not running anymore?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t think I need to anymore.”

Beau’s hand stills, palm falling open and soft, not an offering, not quite, but almost. “I’m glad. We’d miss you, if you left.” She exhales, heavy, and finally she meets Yasha’s eyes as she admits, “I’d miss you.”

Yasha reaches out, gently tilts Beau’s hand, traces her fingers across the lines and calluses of her palm. Beau lets out a shuddery little breath, but doesn’t pull her hand away. “I’d miss you too. All of you.”

“But mostly me, right?” Beau’s smile is crooked and teasing, but Yasha can’t bring herself to tease back, like Beau’s so clearly expecting her to in some way to break the tension building between them. She brushes her fingers gently along the crease between Beau’s thumb and palm, and Beau’s fingers twitch, just a little. 

“Yes,” Yasha answers, simply. “And if I left, I’d come back for you.”

She knows Beau hears the truth in the words, by the way she suddenly goes still. And a bolt of terror strikes through Yasha, because maybe it was too much, too soon, even though it’s the truth. It’s been the truth for a long time, perhaps even longer than Yasha’d been willing to admit to herself. 

She expects Beau to pull away, to deflect, but instead Beau closes her hand, tangles her fingers through Yasha’s, and they stay like that for a long while, holding hands in the dark of Beau and Jester’s bedroom, not saying anything else.

But in the end, Yasha’s not sure they need to.

-

Beau wakes up in the morning with an unfamiliar weight over her shoulder and next to her in bed, and it takes a moment for the memories of the night before to filter through. She and Yasha are in the same bed, Yasha asleep on her stomach next to Beau, her arm flung haphazardly over Beau’s chest and shoulder, Beau’s leg hooked over one of Yasha’s calves. 

There’s a funny little warm wiggle in her stomach, and for a moment, Beau allows herself to sink into the sensation. Then she opens her eyes, finds a face grinning at her from  _ very close, _ and shrieks. 

That ruins the moment. Yasha is instantly up, and Beau hisses in pain as she accidentally uses Beau’s chest to prop herself up, eyes a little wild in a way that makes Beau think she’s not really awake yet. The only thing remotely close to a weapon by Beau’s bed is the candle holder on her bedside table, which is lucky for Jester, who scrambles backwards, hands up in a placating gesture. 

“Sorry, sorry, sorry!” She says apologetically. “You guys were just all snuggled up together and you were so cute!” She grins, a little sheepishly. “Also, Caduceus sent me up to tell you that he and Vedalla have made breakfast.”

Beau groans, flopping back onto her bed. “Jester, it’s too early for you to give me a heart attack,” she complains, throwing an elbow over her eyes. She feels the weight of Yasha, who had sprung from bed at Beau’s shriek, settle carefully back down on the edge of the bed, having realized there was no intruder, but rather an enthusiastic Jester wearing a frilly purple nightgown. 

“Sorry!” Jester chirps again, not sounding sorry at all. She pats Beau’s leg under the blankets then leaves the room, letting the door slam behind her. Beau takes her arm off her face, suddenly aware she and Yasha are in the room alone. 

“We should probably…” Yasha gestures vaguely in the direction of the door. Her hair is tangled in a wild poof on one side of her head, one of her braids starting to come loose, and Beau suppresses an urge to smooth it down. 

“Yeah, we should.”

The silence that falls over them is a little awkward as Yasha finds her shawl on the floor and Beau winds her hair up into its usual topknot. But the silence is broken by the mild chaos of the kitchen as they come downstairs. Mugs of coffee and tea are passed around, along with plates full of food. Veth’s standing on her chair to be seen over the edge of the table, and she’s enthusiastically explaining why, exactly, they should go find her more black powder and Caleb’s complaining about the quality of his newest batch of paper to no one in particular and Jester’s forced Fjord to let her examine the progress of his growing tusks. 

It’s easy to be swept up in the familiarity of the noise, and Beau sinks into a chair, accepting a plate of food from Caduceus. Yasha takes the other empty seat on the other side of the table, still looking a little sleep-rumpled, and she meets Beau’s eyes with a tiny small that does funny things to Beau’s stomach. She looks away before can blush, focusing on her own hands where they curl around a cup of coffee, and that’s somehow almost worse.

They shared a bed last night. They  _ held hands  _ last night. And Beau suddenly can’t stop thinking about the feeling of Yasha’s fingertips brushing against her palm, the softness in which she did it. Beau doesn’t think her hands are anything special, really; they’re callused from her staff, and her knuckles are scarred in the places where the skin was split open in the same place from fistfights when she was a teenager, before she knew how to properly wrap her hands. They’re just  _ hands.  _ That’s not to say she doesn’t know how to use them (and she can use them well, thank you very much), but now she’s staring at her own hands as if they hold the secret of the universe. 

She can feel Yasha’s gaze on her across the table, and heat rises up the back of her neck. Caleb, next to her, is watching her a little too closely, and Beau scowls at him, shoving a piece of bacon into her mouth. Caleb, long since used to her tactics to get people to stop looking at her, is unphased and just raises an eyebrow before returning to his bowl of oatmeal. 

And then, like someone issued an order, the meal is done, and everyone scatters. Caleb draws a portal to go pick up Yeza and Luc, Caduceus heads off to the market, and Beau finds herself in the little hallway between the kitchen and the stairs, Yasha somewhat awkwardly leaning against the wall. The Xhorhaus, big as it is, is filled with people who don’t really understand the meaning of the word privacy. Everyone is in everyone else’s business all the time, and any opportunities for private (or semi-private) conversations are to be grabbed when the chance comes up. 

“About last night,” Beau says, and Yasha grimaces, just a little. 

“I’m sorry,” she says, rubbing the back of her neck. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”

There’s a small sinking feeling in Beau’s stomach, and she reaches her hand into her pocket where a piece of parchment lies, folded edges worn smooth and soft. She’s read Yasha’s note to her so often that she’s all but memorized it, traced the loops and dips of the handwriting. She’d even at one point carefully examined the crossed off section at the top and made out the poem. The poem, which was objectively terrible, but made even more endearing for that fact. 

But maybe she’s been reading too much into it. No one has ever written her a poem before, or a letter detailing all the things they like about her, but maybe that’s a platonic thing friends do. And she’s never really had friends before, not like this. 

Yasha’s doing the thing with her shoulders like she’s trying to seem smaller. “My room,” she says, then stops, as if she’s trying to figure out what she wants to say next. 

“It’s too empty.” Is what she seems to settle on. “I love it, I do, especially with the mural Jester painted, but.” She shrugs. 

“I get it,” Beau says, and she  _ does.  _ It’s why she threw her blankets back last night in the first place, because she knew the expression on Yasha’s face, the way the loneliness creeps up on you fastest in the dark. There’s a reason why she so easily agreed to sharing a room with Jester even though she could’ve had her own, and why she finds it hard to sleep in Caleb’s tower. 

It’s magnificent, of course it is, and the care that Caleb put into it shines through in every corner. But Beau sees that and she also sees the perfection of it. There are no dents or scrapes or stains to be found, perfectly preserved, like a ghost house waiting for them to return. And Beau would never, ever tell him, but she can’t help but think back to a very different house in Kamordah, where everything inside it was carefully chosen to show wealth, and any signs that people actually lived there was eased. Once, when she was twelve or thirteen, she carved her name into the wall of her room, tiny and down by the baseboard, but her father had somehow found it. He had made her spackle and paint it over like it was never there, and she’s sure that every other trace of her in that house has been scrubbed clean. 

But the Xhorhaus is large and lived in, even without considering Caduceus over the top furnishing with the giant glowing tree. There are muddy boot prints in the front hall, and scorch marks across the floor from Caleb and Veth’s tinkering, and a sizable dent from the time that Beau and Jester were wrestling over a pastry and Beau accidentally sank her elbow into the wall. She  _ likes  _ this house, likes the noise and the chaos, the way it feels lived in, the impossibility of removing the traces of those who inhabit it. 

As if to prove her point, there’s the echoing sound of a crash, Fjord’s yelp, then Jester’s giggles and Veth’s cackling laughter. Yasha glances over her shoulder towards the sound, and Beau knows that their time alone is running short. Before she can talk herself out of it, she reaches forward to grab Yasha’s elbow. 

“I get it,” she repeats, and Yasha’s bi-colored eyes lock onto hers. “And if you need to...do it again, I’m here, okay?”

“Thank you, Beau,” Yasha says softly, and places her own hand carefully on Beau’s. They stay like that for a second, and it feels like  _ something  _ could happen. Then a door slams, and Beau hears Luc’s happy shrieks, and the moment is over. 

-

Yasha leaves Beau arguing with Caleb at the dining room table. Judging by the volume of their voices and how much they’re gesturing, they’re both enjoying the argument very much, and Yasha doesn’t see any point in interrupting them. In the beginning, it’d taken her a bit to figure out the difference between Beau and Caleb’s friendly arguments and the deeper, darker ones; but now she knows that with trouble comes quiet, clipped words and stiff stillness. Luckily, they’ve not had a serious fight in quite a while, so she’s not worried about this argument turning harsher. 

She climbs up the curling staircase to the second floor, considering asking if Fjord wants to spar, but instead finds herself out on the shared balcony between her and Jester and Beau’s rooms. She leans against the railing and stairs out over the front garden and the street. Below her, Frumpkin walks delicately along the fence, and one of their neighbors, an eldery Drow woman in fine Kryn robes, squints suspiciously up at the house. Yasha waves. 

The woman, after a long pause, gives a clipped wave back. 

At some point Jester had dragged a couple of chairs and a little wrought-iron table out onto the balcony, but Yasha ignores them in favor of sliding down to sit with her back against the railing, staring out across the city. The lanterns give everything a warm, green glow, and a few streets over Yasha can see the orange light and flickering shadows of one of the bonfires. It can be hard to tell time in a city that’s perpetually night, but Yasha thinks it’s late morning, the city softly buzzing as its inhabitants go about their lives. 

She’s not sure how long she sits here, just watching, time fading into something hazy and indistinct. She’s only interrupted by the arrival of Jester, who bounces onto the balcony, fastening an earring. 

“Yasha! There you are! Caleb and I are going to go shopping, do you want to come?” She smiles at Yasha, earnest, and then blinks. “Why are you out here?”

“Oh, you know.” Yasha gestures vaguely in the direction she was looking. “Watching.”

“Watching,” Jester repeats. She comes over and plops down next to Yasha in a puff of skirt and petticoat. “Does this have anything to do with last night?”

“What do you mean, last night?” Yasha tries to play innocent, something she knows she fails at judging by how hot her face feels. 

“ _ Yasha,”  _ Jester teases, poking her arm. “You two were all snuggled up this morning!” She gasps loud enough that Yasha jumps, and smacks her arm. “Did you two  _ kiss?” _

“No, we just slept!” Yasha attempts to duck out of the way of Jester’s excitement, fending her off with one hand. “It was nothing, really.”

“It didn’t seem like nothing.” Jester grins, eyes narrowing. “Beau doesn’t just invite  _ anyone  _ into her bed.”

There’s a moment of silence as Jester realizes what she says, and grimances. “That’s not what I meant. I wasn’t saying that you guys, like,  _ got down  _ last night, with me still in the room. I mean, I know some people get off on that, and maybe if you were super quiet, but you don’t really strike me as the type.”

Yasha’s blushing even more now, and she hides her burning face in her hands. “We didn’t have sex, Jester.”

“Okay.” More silence, then-

“Do you want to?”

“No! I mean, yes? But only if  _ she  _ wants to, and I don’t know if she wants to!”

Jester snorts. “Yasha, I’m pretty sure she wants to.”

“But she hasn’t told me that!”

Jester arranges herself so she’s sitting cross-legged in front of Yasha, folding her hands in her lap. “Yasha, I know a  _ lot  _ about sex. And I’m  _ pretty sure  _ Beau wants to have sex with you.” Before Yasha can protest, she holds up her hand. “I just think you make her nervous.”

“ _ I _ make  _ her  _ nervous?” 

“ _ Yasha, _ ” Jester says again, sounding a little exasperated. “Did you give Beau the poem?”

“I did.” Yasha looks down at her hands. “She hasn’t said anything about it, though.”

Jester snorts. “That’s ‘cause Beau’s bad at feelings. They freak her out and she does stupid stuff to try and deal with them.” 

Yasha can’t help it. She laughs, and Jester beams at her, reaching forward to grab Yasha’s hands. “Just go  _ talk  _ to her!”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure,” Jester says, scoffing. “Who do you think I am?” She pushes herself up, using the railing to drag herself to her feet, and brushes off her skirt. “Me an’ Caleb are leaving, and Veth said something about getting out the targets for Luc to practice, so you have a chance! I believe in you, Yasha!”

“Thanks, Jester,” Yasha says softly. 

Jester, looking very pleased with herself, leans down to quickly kiss Yasha on both cheeks, and then bites her nose for good measure. 

-

Beau sits on the counter in the empty kitchen, a half-finished cup of tea in her hands. The room is suddenly very quiet; Jester and Caleb had just come through, Jester chattering a mile a minute about visiting a bakery, a new Dynasty fashion she likes, and if maybe they should invite Essek over to dinner again, because he must get lonely, all by himself in that tower. Caleb trails behind her, looking a little overwhelmed but overall fond, and allows Jester to yank him out the door. Caduceus had come through too, talking about repotting his orchids and saying something about growth that could either be an elaborate metaphor for life or it could just be about gardening, it’s sometimes hard to tell with Cad. 

Outside, Veth has set up a couple of targets so Luc can practice his crossbow, and Beau can hear the occasional shriek of a delighted small child, and Yeza and Veth’s laughter. Fjord, meanwhile, had claimed he was “meditating” in the Happy Room, but Beau had poked her head in and he was snoring, so she thinks that meditating is his code for “napping without being interrupted”, which Beau can get behind. 

So Beau sits on the counter and sips her tea, halfheartedly wishing she’d had Caleb start the fire under the hot tub when Yasha walks in the room. 

“Tea?” Beau asks, using her cup to gesture at the teapot. “Should still be hot. Caduceus said it’s from the Goldcrest plot. It’s nice, kinda minty.”

“No thanks,” Yasha says, and she looks nervous. “I actually came to talk to you.”

Beau freezes with her cup halfway to her mouth, a sudden rush of butterflies in her stomach. “You did?”

Yasha nods. “It’s just...I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, or presume to much, but-”

“I read your note,” Beau blurts out, then freezes. Yasha tilts her head, and there’s a bit of pink rising in her cheeks. 

“You did?”

“No one’s ever done anything like that for me before.” Beau scratches her thumbnail across the ceramic glaze of the cup, unable to look anywhere in Yasha’s direction. “It was...it was really nice.”

“It was?” 

Yasha’s voice is suddenly much closer, and Beau looks up to find her standing only a foot or so away from Beau, head tilted so that her blue eye glints in the light of the room. “Did you like it?”

“I did.” Beau’s suddenly breathless, aware of how close Yasha’s hips are to her knees. She sets the cup aside, then curls her hands into the fabric of her pants to hide their shaking. “I liked it a lot.” She forces herself to meet Yasha’s eyes, nerves crawling through her chest, thinks  _ fuck it,  _ and says “I like  _ you.” _

“You do?” Yasha moves closer, her hips brush against Beau’s knees. They’re so close now, and Yasha’s tall, still taller than Beau even though she’s sitting on the kitchen counter, tall enough that Beau has to tilt her chin to look Yasha in the face. 

“I do.” It’s a confession breathed out so softly that it’s barely there, and Beau’s hands  _ shake  _ and her stomach twists, and for a second nothing happens, and Beau’s so  _ scared  _ that she misread something, that she messed this up somehow, that she’s stepped too far.

Then Yasha moves, and her mouth is hot on Beau’s, and Beau parts her knees around Yasha’s hips and sinks her fingers into Yasha’s arms, and Yasha’s broad, warm hands wrap around her back and pull her  _ closer.  _

They break apart, panting, and Beau can’t help but say “why didn’t we do that sooner?”

Both of them break down into giggles, resting their foreheads together. Yasha smells like leather and fur and a little bit like the lavender soap Jester stocked the Xhorhaus with, and it’s a strangely intoxicating combination, making Beau’s head spin with every breath. 

“I’ve been scared,” Yasha admits quietly. “Of messing something up, of hurting you again.”

Her hand comes up, rests on Beau’s chest, palm starting to glow as if she can heal away the scarred wound. As if she can remove the hurt from its past. But Beau takes her hand, moves it away. 

“I don’t care about that,” Beau says, curling a hand around Yasha’s neck, tangling her fingers in Yasha’s thick hair. “I trust you not to hurt me.”

And then they’re kissing again, less desperately then the first time, but deeper, Beau tilting her head up as Yasha traces kisses across her jaw, one hand brushing against the bare skin of her waist. A thought occurs to Beau, and this time she’s the one that stops them, reluctantly pulling away. 

Yasha immediately stops, looking concerned. “Sorry, sorry,”

“It’s not you. It’s  _ really  _ not you.” Beau laughs a little, roughly. “It’s just...I don’t want this to be a sex thing. I mean, I  _ do  _ want to have sex with you, you’re very hot, but I don’t want it to be  _ just  _ sex.”

“I want to have sex with you, too,” Yasha says, matter-of-fact, and Beau’s mouth suddenly goes dry. 

“Cool, that’s cool,” she says,  _ totally _ smoothly, and Yasha laughs. 

“But,” Yasha continues, her thumb still running distractingly over Beau’s side, “I want this to be more than sex, too, and I’m willing to wait as long as you want to.”

“Not, like, too long though, right?”

Beau swallows Yasha’s laugh in another kiss, and then they don’t talk again for a while. 

Eventually, though, they come up for air, Beau’s arms wrapping over Yasha’s shoulders and Yasha’s around Beau’s waist. Yasha’s the one that breaks the silence. 

“Could we maybe keep this to ourselves for a while?” Yasha asks, then hurriedly adds, “Not because I’m ashamed or anything, it’s just-”

  
“The rest of the Nein are nosy fucks?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m good with that.” Beau grins, a warm glow growing somewhere behind her ribcage. “Get to have you to myself for a while.”

“It sounds nice,” Yasha admits, leaning forward to brush a gentle kiss against Beau’s lips. They’re both so preoccupied that neither of them hear the front door opening and someone entering until there’s a loud gasp in the entrance to the kitchen. 

They both whip around to find Veth, her hands over her mouth, eyes huge, Yeza and Luc lingering behind her. Yeza, knowing what’s coming, gives Beau an apologetic wince a second before Veth explodes. 

“Were you guys  _ kissing?  _ You  _ WERE _ !” Veth shrieks, her voice growing in pitch. She takes off through the house, yelling “Fjord! Caduceus!  _ Guess what Beau and Yasha were just doing?” _

Yasha and Beau blink at each other. 

“I feel like we should’ve seen that coming,” Yasha finally says. 

“Probably,” Beau agrees, but she can’t find it in herself to be too mad at the situation. Somewhere upstairs a door is flung open as Veth goes charging through the house to spread the news. Beau, unwilling to let the enthusiasm of her friends break this moment, gives a gentle tug of Yasha’s braid to refocus the woman’s attention back on her.

“So,” Beau says conversationally, “how do you feel about sleepovers?”

Turns out, Yasha doesn’t need to say anything to answer the question. 


End file.
